i liked anathem... but i also liked cryptonomicon, and the baroque cycle.
can't wait to read his new book.
nothing has been as good as the diamond age though.
whatever happened to the tv series they were making out of it?
wasn't george clooney producing it or something?

can i please recommend the child garden by geoff ryman?
i'd love to know what other people think of it.
i reckon it's wildly underrated sci-fi.. actually sci-fi doesn't cover it.
"speculative fiction" maybe.
one of my favourite books ever -- along with contact by carl sagan.

i just finished reading brave new world.
can't believe i'd never read it before.
now i'm dividing my (extremely limited) reading time between:

his dark materials
a song of ice and fire
and, somewhat ironically, a book called "getting things done"

@hpqp: "I already told you, I am a program run by the New World Order."

Highly Problematic Quantum Philosopher?

>> ^hpqp:

oh @marbles darling, did I touch a nerve?
I already told you, I am a program run by the New World Order to scour the Sift for renegade truth-bearers such as yourself. Don't you think you should stop trying to attract your worst enemy's attention? Tin foil hats cannot stop predator drones you know.
>> ^marbles:
hpqp's arrogance (or more like the abundance thereof) up 'till now suggests that he is a tool. An ignorant one at best, a state owned one at worst.
>> ^hpqp:
Burzynski's evidence (or more like lack thereof) up 'till now suggests that he is a quack. A well-intentioned one at best, a fraudulent one at worst.
>> ^marbles:
Preface: It's great if this really is a breakthrough.
I'm a bit skeptical though.
1. Genetic engineering/manipulation "therapy" has had little success. 5 years ago they claimed gene therapy could cure melanoma in the American Journal of Science. It's addressed in this article here: Don't be deluded that this is the cancer breakthrough.
2. The Powers-that-be don't really want a cure to cancer. Antineoplastons show great promise as a cure. They're non-toxic and replicate natural occurring chemicals in the body that inhibit the abnormal enzymes that cause cancer. Antineoplastons are responsible for curing some of the most incurable forms of terminal cancer. Why have you never heard of it? Good question. This is the answer: http://videosift.com/video/Burzynski-Cancer-Is-Serious-Business





Oh, I get it. So you mimic government propaganda then. Maybe that explains why you're using Obama's tasteless predator drone joke.

Alex Pareene: "Hah! It's funny because predator drone strikes in Pakistan have killed literally hundreds of completely innocent civilians"

I'm gonna step out here and defend the Puritans. In the early 17th century the Puritans in England were not happy with the Church of England (which they were a part of at the time). They saw that its reformation had not gone far enough, meaning, it was still way too close to Catholicism. Above all else, Puritans despised Catholicism, the Pope, and everything the Catholic Church did and they didn't want the Church of England to be anything close to it. When they tried to further the reforms within the Church of England, they were blocked. Though protestant, King James I refused to allow the reforms and told the Hampton Court that he preferred the status quo and that the monarch should rule the church through the bishops. The Puritans felt alienated by this move. In 1625, Charles I became king and he tried to dissolve Parliament entirely to neutralize his enemies, which included plenty of Puritans. This, coupled with the Thirty-Years War (Catholics vs. Protestants), which had over 8 million casualties, now being in full-swing prompted the Puritans to flee to the New World.

The Puritans weren't trying to establish a religiously free society. Roger Williams, who wanted separation of Church & State, was banished and founded Rhode Island. However, the Puritans did want their own society where they weren't underneath the authority of the monarch, the Church of England and where they didn't fear for their lives because of what they believed.

It's really a new world as far as cameras go. They're now so ubiquitous that these nimrods are able to produce a tightly edited video of their jackassery that includes slow motion and multiple angle coverage.

thanks.

I think the guy after Roseanne is her boyfriend.

>> ^marinara:

good one trancecoach. the force is strong w/ you

I don't believe man can become a god because gods don't exist. This whole "New world order" crap is just magic juju drivel. Take it somewhere else.

I'd flip that around..if you read Revelation you'll find the blueprint for the New World Order. One world government, one world economy and one world religion. It's all being prepared for the antichrist. Government, so one man (the antichrist) is the head of all nations. Economy, to control all commerce and to lock dissenters out of participation (mark of the beast). Religion, so all the people will be worshipping the same false god (Satan)

Why do you think the leaders of the world gather every year in the bohemian grove to worship Moloch? What do you think happens in these secret socieites? They're worshipping demons, because they know where power in this world comes from; the chief of demons, Satan.


>> ^rougy:
Sorry, Lad.
From a Biblical perspective undermined the whole of your argument.
That doesn't mean I don't like you...
Just sort of means you haven't been paying attention!
<IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/smile.gif">

Sick of the lies
Sick of the war

We’ll never have another, don’t be a silly bugger,
Check under the tree have a more than a stocking stuffer
It make my belly shudder, Don’t want to eat my supper
Come mother earth wanna serve jam and peanut butter

Another latecomer, here comes a great summer,
Arnie Schwarzenegger owns more than eight hummers,
But the trees suffer, too many woodcutter,
Each and everyone is killing off the earth mother
I shouldn’t even entertain the scene, humanity: insanity machine
Admit that it is us that lost this dream, Last generation passed the buck onto me.

Like a duck out of the water, we’re not going where we oughta
Pretend we’re getting tougher, fronting that we got this covered
But the rights are given up ah, given to the new-world-order
Too many men are nutters, taking out sisters and brothers.

Oh why won’t you see for your self, oh why wont you see for your self

Because I’m sick of the lies and I’m sick of the war and I’m
Sick of the lies and I’m sick of the war.

What did I really come here for? should have been among the sons of war
Time is on, and many man come but gotta be a part of the freedom cause
What a mess were in, we’ve got money in the tin,
But a president acting like a totalitarian
Some of them think it don’t matter, why the fat cats are getting fatter
Some of them think the phenomenon is given on a silver platter
What you seek to gain is what you can’t afford, well I’m
Sick of the lies and sick of the war

There’s a young man in an old cafe, rising his coffee cup he says
“I’m holding on to yesterday, until I build a better world some way”

Just let your mind fall away, It doesn’t matter what the haters say
Forget that man has to be this way
Forget that man has to be a slave
Follow your art, say what you’re saying
It’s all around so why are we waiting?
Come on people now we better start celebrating,
People all around, we better start celebrating
People all around, we better start celebrating
Come on everybody, we better start celebrating
People all around, we better start celebrating
Come on everybody, come on everybody now yo

People all around, we better start celebrating
If your mind is not ok then do some meditation
There better be another way until we’re communicating
We got to move faster because humanity is fading
I can see that we need intelligence operating,
We better call Mister T and the rest of the A-Team
We need true intentions and not just faking
We got no time for stalling or procrastinating

Sick of the lies and I’m sick of the war.

Considering the universe is a whole lotta nothin, I'd probably pay a whole lotta nothin. Everything we've seen and explored is a depressing, barren wasteland of nothingness. How about we go find a suitable planet to live on and wipe out all the dinosaurs on it so we can make a new home and build stargates between the two worlds so we can send nukes back and forth and wage war trying to control sections of that new world and destroy it just like we have this one?

I mean come on, people! Let's push up!

Assuming they leave and you never have contact with them again? OK.
>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^berticus:
I don't really get the "leave them be!" approach. If you watch a particular Attenborough doco (very old) where they find an isolated PNG tribe, one of the reasons for establishing contact is the fact that we have medicine they badly need. Common ailments that we can deal with easily lead to needless deaths in those tribes. Also, there is mutual enrichment -- they gain technology, medicine, and knowledge, while we get to learn about a new culture.
I certainly respect not wanting to destroy their culture and habitat, and don't worry -- I am very skeptical of the 'white man' coming in and fucking everything up, as he so often does. But I think there are valid reasons to establish contact.

They did not just meet some white people today, they were exposed to an entire new world including new technology. How that doesn't have a profound effect on their culture, I don't know. Imagine how it would change you to meet an alien or a time traveler one day. They show you magical things you can't understand, then they leave. You would forget about this day and go back to your 9-5 grind?

>> ^berticus:

I don't really get the "leave them be!" approach. If you watch a particular Attenborough doco (very old) where they find an isolated PNG tribe, one of the reasons for establishing contact is the fact that we have medicine they badly need. Common ailments that we can deal with easily lead to needless deaths in those tribes. Also, there is mutual enrichment -- they gain technology, medicine, and knowledge, while we get to learn about a new culture.
I certainly respect not wanting to destroy their culture and habitat, and don't worry -- I am very skeptical of the 'white man' coming in and fucking everything up, as he so often does. But I think there are valid reasons to establish contact.


They did not just meet some white people today, they were exposed to an entire new world including new technology. How that doesn't have a profound effect on their culture, I don't know. Imagine how it would change you to meet an alien or a time traveler one day. They show you magical things you can't understand, then they leave. You would forget about this day and go back to your 9-5 grind?

@marbles I guess I just don't buy into the New World Order bullshit. Do you?

@NetRunner

I am a little confuzled about calling @Skeeve and my conversation both true and a non sequitur. I guess because I am addressing a more theoretical, man kind building question and you a more practical one. Your talking about the more practical, of making things work now, I am talking more about how I want things to work, for always. A the difference between the tangible and the ideal I guess.

The examples you pose are actually the exact ones I was thinking of when I think of the brutality of democratic things, at times. I have been considering the statement "the needs of the many..." for the course of a few weeks now. Forgive me, about to go on a tangent, but I want a trial by fire to so speak if you have the time. This will be a wall of text for the uninterested.

When I was first exposed to this phrase/idea, it was from Spock. And from then on, I always took it as the rational position one has to take to help the whole at the cost of the one. It was a profound idea in my youth. It had such a charity to it. It seemed to speak to the core of what is good. Everything that is good about man was contained in that one simple phrase. The devil is in the details, though, so I decided recently to examine my long held Vulcan heritage.

Over the past couple of years, since my fall from Grace, I have been increasingly interested in the role of evolution in the social development of our species. We have a lot in common with our animal kin, especially the social nature of mammalia. The role of emotions and intuitive social orders with post rationalized rule set changes are the order of our creed. For an animal that has a very long gestation period, few offspring per litter, and long maturation periods, certain social orders HAD to be developed or we wouldn't survive. Many of our longest held evolutionary advances aren't because they are "good" morally, but are good for survival when being chased by tigers. In that, I think the democratic pricible is actually as old as social creatures, and even more basic, as force.

I think the reason Spock's words stung so true in my heart of hearts is it spoke to millions of years of culture beyond my ability to fully comprehend. It spoke past my reason to the core of my being. Now, when I examine the phrase "the needs of the many..." and take into light the core being, I find a much different sentence. Let me tell you what I found that I didn't expect.

I find that the statement of "the needs of the many..." very closely relates to the Democratic position. When your tribe is 20 people, and the fate of your people all hang in the balance of routine decisions, evolutionary speaking, to survive, it is easier to remove the rational component of this choice. The rational implications of every choice you make determining the fate of your entire race is a burden that doesn't aid in decision making. It is much "better" to program in an emotional response and have that being post-rationalize later, intelligence is actually more of a burden than a tool in this area. This way, we remove the impotence one might face in the light of such a larger than life issue, and set in that mind a continuing sequence of emotional ties to the event through post-rationalizations.

I think the reason Democracy works so well, given this situation, is it very closely mimics the "rules of the jungle." By that, I mean force. Democracy is an interesting formalization of the rules of the jungle. Instead of the force being a stick or a knife, it is a vote. We might not consider our vote a weapon, but essentially, when you boil it down it is our most trusted language. So much so, that every animal we face understands it. We have subjugated nearly every animal on this planet via force, and now try our hands at the very planet itself. All the while, we never asked ourselves the question, is using force right?

When being chased by a tiger, you can't ask that question. Even more so, it is the application of force that seems to drive the evolution on this planet forward. However, it only advances the flags in the due course of force. Any being that comes after HAS to play by these rules or be defeated before it can flourish. But is this the way it HAS to be? Does humanity find itself on the precipice of being able to change the entire course of evolution on the planet? Perhaps so. Slowly, we have taken the cunning, and brutal wolfs of the winter lands to being the noblest of companions. And cats, wait, never mind, fuck cats.

Humans might soon, within perhaps our children's, children's lifetime, find themselves in the unique position to change the rules of the game, for good. Weather or not we want to will be the only question. So the question is, why? What is so wrong with Democracy and the underlying shreds of managed force something to be concerned about? Let me bring on my final point.

The course of discovery seems to be without end for man. It seems inevitable, that in time, each human will have access to such a level of technology that any one person could end all life on the planet with little to no effort. Our only current solutions for it are that of liberty, which would only take one crazy person to end it all, or regulations, of which would have to be of the most extreme kind to protect against knowledge that is easy to acquire and use. It seems that the current rules that bind this planet along with mans advancement in technology have set us on a collision course with a cruel destiny. While not a certainty, I do believe it is certain that the tools of Democratic force will not save us from our own self imposed destruction.

While I have still not made all my points, like why I also think the democratic position is actually bad (perhaps even morally bad); in spite of that, I do suppose that it is insufficient to manage our path. It isn't that I want it to be wrong, it is that we truly need something else if we intend to survive past an infant species. If we lose the game, the cycle of force will most likely continue on without us, spawning forth new entities of force. But if we win, we will rewrite the rules for all existence on the planet. No longer bound to rules that keep up from being eaten by tigers, but by rules that extend us to the furthest reaches of our dreams.

I think it will all start by eating all the cats, because anything that will bite you in your sleep isn't fit in this new world. And I yield my time back to an audience that is most likely not interested in my thought processes that go to solving less than practical problems. I will only continue on request as to not come off as pedantic, well, more so.


edit, grammar